Tag Archives: writing

Hello. I haven’t written here in a while. That’s something I hope to change.

I realise it is 6 weeks into the year already, but after a trip to California last week, my own vague ideas about what 2016 should mean for me, have solidified.

Travel (a bit) less / be more thoughtful about travel. I’m in an International role, and I work for a company with headquarters and many of the decision-makers 8 hours behind me. This makes the notion of travelling less in 2016 a little ironic and possibly, untenable! Nevertheless, I work with a great team and I hope to be more thoughtful about where and when I travel (and for how long) this year. I know I’ll do more again, but right now, I’m at a point in my life where I need to be setting more roots and plans locally. Interestingly, my trip to SF this week was my first significant travel since October, so this is already working (to an extent), but the global #HelloWorld tour will of course eat into that significantly – not that I’m complaining!

Make more Stuff. Per Chris Heilmann’s fantastic post about Developer Relations / Evangelism / Advocacy this past week, “how often do you code?” is a key question in understanding our role(s), and I’d been aware for a while that I simply hadn’t been doing much of it lately (beyond testing out examples where devs said they were unable to make samples work). My plan in 2016 is to build something – anything – at least once a month. So far this year I’ve dabbled in Twitter ebooks bots and Alexa skills – both built on the backs of others – but I hope to build, publish, and write about more in the coming months. I’m particularly excited by the growing trend towards No UI / conversational interfaces and it has been great to re-connect with friends like Matt and Haje in the preceding months on these topics. I’m also hoping to write a lot more, as blogging and sharing is a major part of where the amazing ride and network I’ve enjoyed since ~2006, started.

Invest more time in mentoring others. In my previous lives at IBM and Pivotal I had a lot of opportunity to get involved in these activities. I’ve been at Twitter very close to 2 years now, and it is incredible to realise how much I’ve learned “through osmosis” – partly from amazing individuals like Isaac, Sylvain, Taylor, Craig, Chris, and Romain – and more often, from others still around me. My goal in 2016 is to share my knowledge and support much more widely: both to co-workers, third party developers, and up-and-coming members of the tech community around me. Time to hit the local meetup circuit, and to do more coaching of others in public speaking, career mentoring, and personal support.

I’ve got a lot of exciting stuff to look forward to this year professionally – I’m deeply involved in a number of initiatives, and I’m excited that @jack has put Developers firmly on our list of priorities! This is where I’d always hoped we would get back to. Nevertheless, on top of that, these are three of my personal plans for the next ~10 1/2 months. I’ve made a good start.

As always, I’m open to comments here, but you’ll also find me open to discuss on Twitter @andypiper.

The Christmas 2011 Big Finish special subscriber-only release, The Four Doctors, contained characters named “Lady Cowen” and “Whitmore” – a lovely little reference to Laura and Tony, also huge fans of Dr Who (as well as hosts of the Ubuntu UK Podcast[1], and some of the folks behind OggCamp). Incidentally – I reckon The Four Doctors is probably one of the best and cleverest Big Finish plays, and certainly it’s my favourite. If you’re into Dr Who, then it is worth a listen.

I’ve just listened to Peter’s new Blake’s 7 audio play, Counterfeit, performed by Gareth Thomas and Paul Darrow. I’d been tipped off via some tweets that there should be a nod to me in this one… initially, I’d jokingly whinged that it was only a concealed reference in the dialogue rather than a namesake character, but then I heard the line itself:

… but then he twittered on, about chronon bridgebuilding, and deep hyper messaging connections…

Genius! Thank you, Peter – very nice, and I’m honoured🙂

[1] this also gives me a handy opportunity to mention that I was a guest presenter on the first episode of season 5 of UUPC, which was live-broadcast on the interwebs on Tuesday, and released as a download yesterday. Check it out!

I’m 35 years old. More than 20 years ago, I was at school, studying for my GCSEs and later my A-levels. One of the subjects I studied was English Literature. I love reading. I love literature. I love imaginative, creative writing.

There was, obviously, a set curriculum of texts I was expected to read, learn, and internalise. Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy, and others. I’m glad I have that grounding. I was also allowed to read anything I wanted, from an early age – and I gravitated towards novelisations of Star Trek, of the Neverending Story, the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and other science fiction and fantasy stories.

Around the age of 12 or 13 I stumbled upon the Dragonriders of Pern series. At the time, I was interested in Games Workshop and Warhammer… a fantasy world involving dragons and, ultimately, a rediscovery of technology, was an obvious step.

So, I started to read the Pern chronicles. I remember reporting on them in my “reading diary” aged around 12 or 13 – a series of books about a near-mediaeval planet where dragonriders saved the population from the deadly Thread. It wasn’t until I read The White Dragon that I really appreciated that this wasn’t just a trash teen fantasy series – themes of erotic passion, love, independence, adventure, and intelligence were involved (and would connect to science fiction, computing and other directions beyond that tale).

I’m deeply saddened to learn that Anne McCaffrey has passed. Her tales and her books truly did light up my early teenage years. I loved the Dragonriders of Pern stories and I hope that others will connect with them in the same way in the future. Thank you, Anne.

One of the things I’ve taken on this year is a regular writing assignment for the Global WebSphere Community. If you’re a member of the community (and if you use or are interested in WebSphere products, you probably should join – it’s free to sign up – here’s a link to my profile), depending on your profile preferences you may have just received the first edition of The Sphere Journal, a new online newsletter from GWC.

Welcome to the premier issue of The Sphere Journal Online. We will use this space to bring you opinion, news, and technical information on how to use your current WebSphere products more effectively and help you make more informed decisions about WebSphere products you should be deploying in your organization.

My monthly column is the WebSphere Deep Diving Instructor where I’ll be sharing news from inside the labs about the “hot” areas practitioners might want to explore more deeply, and the areas where I’m hearing the most interest or difficult technical questions from customers and the community. My first column does focus on my key area of messaging, but we’ll certainly broaden out from that over the course of the year.

[somewhat confusingly, there’s also a section called The Message Queue, but that’s a news section rather than being specific to WebSphere MQ!]

I posted about a similar topic a few months ago, but mainly talked about the different blogs I contribute to. Time for a quick round-up of some of the main places you can find that content (you’ll find longer lists on my About, Audio/Video, and Writings pages).

right here…🙂 in general, I use this blog as a way of aggregating / calling out my major pieces of content